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finger injury 3-Jun-2004 At 7:22:25 AM Julian

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hi rich, how are you? depends on the site and the injury. some taping can be very therapeutic and have minimal propensity to cause injury somewhere else eg taping your knee if you have lateral patella tracking syndrome. Taping your ankle is another example. when taping is done the right way, you can support most joints along as it is not been required to load maximally. or for that matter anywhere near maximal. more moderate loading over a longer period is easier to handle. hence fingers are VERY problematic. If you do it tight enough to support any given tissue, you would have to take it off after minute or two because you will have cut off the blood supply; knees and weight lifters for instance.

elbows are controversial. People still wear braces etc to offset loading along the forearm muscles and into the tendinous insertion (golfers or tennis elbow). And there is no doubt that it can give relief. Again, it depends on the condition, tendinitis or tendinosis, and how the condition arose in the first place. Unfortunately practitioners still recommend for both because they are unaware of the differences. Or people just give it a go and see. Long standing elbow pain (more than 3 weeks) will benefit less (pretty much along a sliding scale with time) because the underlying condition is weakness, not inflammation. People say that the brace makes it feel better after a while of climbing: that is just the elbow warming up and is a normal pattern for tendinosis. You must address the inherent weakness not just offset the loading to a different part of the tendinous insertion. In fact braces/strapping will just delay the healing that needs to take place in the majority of cases.

So to answer your question, it can help and it can also hinder. Depends on the condition and the way it is taped.

I just re-read your question and I think you may have been asking about taping for general support of non-injured tissues. DEFINITLY NOT. All you achieve by this is not allowing the tissues to be slightly overloaded. That is how they gain strength over a period of time. Then maybe one day you don’t strap as tight and sure enough you injure yourself. It is all about consistency. And the old adage ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ is a good one. I can not stress this enough. Don’t tape if you don’t have an overt injury. You will get yourself into a big pot of poo. Train smartly and progressively and you wont have a problem.

Hope that answered your question..

Julian